As Richard Thompson prepares to tour the UK for new album Electric, the
63-year-old tells Martin Chilton why music still excites him.

Richard Thompson splits his time between homes in Los Angeles and London but his mordant songs still spring from a very English imagination.

"I'm not that affected by surroundings when I write music," the 63-year-old told me. "There is an inner landscape that you draw on, a sort of inner Brontë. It's a bleakness in which I always see songs happening. It's a fictional world. Maybe it doesn't even exist."

Despite the emotional desolation of some of his songs, there is a wit and jollity to the music of someone who describes himself as "a very positive, optimistic person".

He grew up in north London (we attended the same grammar school) where he spent most of his free time playing music. Thompson says: "I'm not sure I was ever really thinking about making it in music. I just played all the time for the sheer enjoyment, and I was interested to see what I could do. As a young teenager, you hear someone on the radio and think, I wonder if I can play that lick?

"There was luck involved, too, in that my parents did not move to South London when they were planning to, so I got to hang out with my friends Ashley Hutchings and Simon Nicol at a Muswell Hill house called Fairport (hence the band's name Fairport Convention) and it grew from there. I just hoped I would end up doing something in a creative context rather than in an office." Thompson looks at my tie, adding: "And I swore when I left school that I would never wear a tie again, or a jacket. The old William Ellis school uniform killed me."

"I worked for these two German designers in Muswell Hill," Thompson says. "Eberhard Schultz, who was a really great mosaicist, and Hans Unger, who was a graphic designer who did London Transport posters. I worked mostly with Eberhard on stained glass for about six months, until the music really took over and I decided I could not do both."

There was always music in the home, as Thompson recalls: "My father played not very good guitar but it meant that in his record collection was Django Reinhardt and Les Paul, and lots of good jazz in among some crap. When Dad lived in Dumfries as a teenager, he went to Glasgow to see Django and the Hot Club Quintet. It made a lasting impression. I know people talk about fantasy jam sessions but I would have preferred to have had the chance to watch Django rather than try to keep up with him."

Thompson talks softly and has a genial expression, but is watchful. I wonder if some of that watchfulness came from his policeman father. With a smile, Thompson recalls: "He was a Scotland Yard detective and he taught me to remember people who went past. He would say: 'OK, that bloke who went past, describe him.' At first, I would say, 'Oh crap . . . he was . . . oh, I can't remember.' 'OK, try again', he would say. And I would try again and say, 'he was about 5'8", ginger hair, brown coat.' So that's true, there is a bit of that in my character. It can turn you into an observer, which is not necessarily a good thing because you want to swim in society in a sense. But to be an artist you have to be on the edge of society, getting a view of the abyss."

His reputation as one of the world's finest guitarists was built first withFairport Convention, a band he describes as "important historically" and who have a spring tour of the UK next month that coincides with Thompson's own tour showcasing his new album Electric.

Fairport's tour includes a gig at the iconic Cropredy Festival, which always closes with Thompson's song Meet On The Ledge. I ask about him playing the song at his mother's funeral. "It was in my mother's will about what hymns and songs she had at her funeral, and Meet On The Ledge was a song she wanted. Playing it there was the hardest thing I have ever done. I probably look at the lyrics in a different way from when I wrote them. I'm not sure what I was thinking about when I wrote it, I was only about 19. It was the sixties, after all. People still connect with the song, and because of the Cropredy Festival it has become anthemic."

In 1971, a lorry crashed into a house in Little Hadham which Thompson shared with Fairport members. He was away on a gig and scattered among the debris were countless uncashed cheques. Band members say he was "useless" with money. Is it true?

Thompson explains: "I have forced myself to be organised in some areas but I am not good with money. If I deal with money I start to worry about it to the point of neurosis, so I hire someone to do the accounts now. I have this blind faith that somehow there will always be enough in the bank. When I was about 18, I didn't care for worldly things, really I didn't. So I would do recording sessions for people and get paid and think 'OK, it's a cheque' but would stick it under the mattress and never get round to cashing it. Plus, I didn't have a bank account or think in those terms. I would just give money away. I was a total aesthete. I should be like that now, but I'm not. I'm more cynical. But it was the hippy, flower-power love-one-another era of 'hey man, you need something, have it'.

"I'm probably more realistic about human nature. I'm still positive but it is a mixed world and in the early 1970s I ran into a couple of sharks who ripped me off and I learned my lesson."

Another change has been to overcome shyness. He says: "I used to be very, very, very shy and in some ways being on stage was a salvation for me. The folk clubs I toured with my first wife Linda in the 1970s was a good way to confront that."

Although he is in LA for nine months a year, his essential Englishness comes through in his love of sport. He still plays cricket ("my spin bowling was atrocious last year, I feel retirement coming on") and has loved football since being taken to see Chelsea aged eight. "I always hated Arsenal, they were boring in the George Eastham era [1960-66]," he says. In the US, he watches the Premier League on Fox Sports and has coached soccer, including teaching Arnold Schwarzenegger's son. He adds wistfully: "I coached for the American Youth Soccer Organisation and they have a couple of million kids playing — much to the detriment of baseball and American Football, which is great as far as I am concerned. I did that for about 10 years and really miss being out there . . . I might go back to refereeing."

He also plays tennis ("Rod Laver, pre-spin era of hitting flat," he says, when I ask what style he plays) but can no longer defeat his musician son Teddy Thompson. "Ah, I am quite accurate but don't hit the ball hard," he explains. "Teddy is fit and muscular and destroys me — and I paid for his bloody lessons."

But Old Man Thompson is no physical slouch. He has a hectic schedule, which he relishes. "Touring is my favourite thing. Getting on the road with a band is heaven. 'Wow, I get paid for this'. I'm 63 and if you can keep going, and are not arthritic, then you will do so, even if you just want to play in a pub. If you play music, you play music, that's the wonderful thing. I went to visit a friend's mum recently and she is 93, and we walked in and she was playing Debussy's Golliwog Cakewalk. It was a treat. Horowitz was playing in his 80s and Segovia was touring until he was 90. If the Stones are doing their 70th anniversary tour, then we'll do a Fairport one as well."

Thompson is pleased to see so many family members making a name for themselves as musicians — son Teddy, daughter Kami and grandson Zac Hobbs are all on the road, and there is no dimming in his own motivation as he prepares to tour the new album.

He adds: "1962, I bought Green Onions by Booker T, so I think it's only right that 45 years later he should have me doing the Steve Cropper bits on Green Onions at the Ryman in Nashville. So that was, wow what an absolute thrill. One of the all time great singles and I got to be on it playing with Booker. So yes, music still motivates and excites me."